Tuning In: Third round would be a first for Goucher

Thursday

Apr 14, 2011 at 6:00 AM

Radio voice Dave Goucher believes the Bruins must advance to the Eastern Conference finals to erase their nightmares of the past two postseasons, and he thinks they have a good chance of doing that — as long as they can avoid playing on May 14.

On May 14, 2009, the Bruins lost to Carolina in overtime at the Garden in Game 7 of the conference semifinals.

On May 14, 2010, the Bruins fell again at home in Game 7 of the conference finals, this time to the Flyers, 4-3, after leading 3-0 in the game and 3-0 in the series.

“I remember thinking the year before,” Goucher said, “ ‘Boy, it would be impossible to feel much worse at the end of a season.’ And here I was a year later, and it was much worse.”

The Bruins open the conference quarterfinals on NESN, Versus and WBZ radio (1030 AM and 98.5 FM) at 7 tonight at the TD Garden against the Montreal Canadiens.

“For my money,” Goucher said, “it’s the best rivalry in the NHL.”

Knocking off the Canadiens would be only a first step toward the Bruins putting the past two years behind them.

“I think they’re a deeper team than last year,” Goucher said. “They’ve had the best goaltender (Tim Thomas) in the league all season. They have one of the best defensemen in the league in Zdeno Chara and the players that went through that awful experience of what happened last year, I would think that’s an enormous motivating factor for them.

“When you put all that into the equation, I like their chances to make a deeper run than they’ve made in years past.”

The Bruins haven’t reached the third round of the playoffs in Goucher’s 11 years of calling their games on the radio.

Thomas broke the NHL record with his .938 save percentage, but he has won only one playoff series in his career. The good news is that series was a 4-0 sweep of Montreal two years ago.

“I think he’s been even better than he was two years ago,” Goucher said, “but I think it’s important for him to show he can lead the team to a deep playoff run.”

The Canadiens own a 24-8 edge in playoff series against Boston and took the regular-season series, 4-2, this year, but the Bruins swept Montreal the last time the teams met in the postseason and Boston blew away the Habs, 7-0, in their final regular-season meeting this season.

“From a fan’s standpoint,” Goucher said, “I would hope it’s more excitement and anticipation as opposed to fearing playing Montreal.”

Goucher believes the Bruins must use their size and physicality to slow down the smaller, faster Canadiens, and avoid silly penalties.

“The Canadiens have killed the Bruins with their power play this year,” Goucher said, “especially when you get up to Montreal. It can be a real circus atmosphere up there. As long as they don’t get too caught up in that atmosphere and play their game, I think their chances are pretty good.”

Chara’s return to Montreal in Game 3 Monday will heighten the circus atmosphere. Chara hasn’t been back there since he checked Max Pacioretty into a stanchion on March 8. Pacioretty suffered a concussion and cracked vertebra and hasn’t played since.

“Even before this incident with Pacioretty,” Goucher said, “every time that Z touched the puck in Montreal, he’d get booed. So it’s not a new phenomenon for him.”

The Bruins averaged a record 3.1 rating on NESN this season, a 41 percent increase from last year. The previous high was a 2.5 in 2008-09 and 1995-96. All of NESN’s Bruins programs had double-digit increases in ratings this year, including a 122 percent leap for “The Instigators with Mike Milbury.”

NESN’s pregame show will double to 60 minutes during the first round.

“The Big Show” on WEEI-WVEI got a little bigger with the addition of Mike Adams this week. Adams joins Glenn Ordway and Michael Holley from 2-6 p.m., then continues to host his own show, “Planet Mikey,” after that. Adams’ show is often pre-empted or shortened by Red Sox and Celtics games, and he told Ordway and Holley on the air that he was bored and needed more airtime.

St. John’s High students Dan Zawalich, Tim Zawalich, Griffin Monahan and Jonathan Green will be among the 100 spotters for WBZ-TV during its live start-to-finish coverage of the 115th Boston Marathon on Monday. The spotters represent more than 20 high schools and colleges from 29 towns.

The spotters’ network was created 26 years ago to track the progress of runners and relay information to the studio.